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Halloween home transformation with props and skip waste

Zac Sherrattin Banstead
BBC A man with clear glasses, short ginger hair and a grey beard. He is wearing a dark blue hooded jumper with a logo reading DD roofing on the left of his chest. He is looking into the camera. Behind him are various Halloween decorations attached to the side of a light brown shed.BBC
David Donovan raised £3,000 for the Royal Marsden through last year's event

A roofer from Surrey has transformed his home into a spooky haunted house for Halloween, hoping to raise thousands of pounds in the process.

David Donovan's home in Hillside, Banstead, usually looks like any other but this week has a 10ft (3m) skeleton, a gory scarecrow and a gruesome graveyard outside.

He has been collecting the giant props for years and builds the scene for the annual event largely from building waste materials and what he finds in skips.

Donovan says hundreds of families turn up to see his house and play the games he lays on each year, adding: "It can get a little bit overwhelming when there's people queueing to get on to your drive."

He said the decorating started "as a family thing" but as it grew, they started to do it for charity.

Donovan raised £3,000 for the Royal Marsden cancer charity at last year's event.

It takes him about four weeks to build, but he said it was touch and go this time around due to recent storms.

Two large cream terraced houses. The photo is taken from the top of the driveway of the house on the left. In the driveway are large Halloween decorations, including a huge skeleton bursting from the roof of a light brown shed on the right of the picture
The decorations tower above the driveway

"It's just been too wet to do any of the building and then with the wind, with the larger items that are over 7ft (2m), there's a fear of them snapping, we've had to leave quite a lot of it to the last minute," he said.

"It gets busy. Then there's trying to run the stalls, make sure everything's working OK. And having enough sweets! That's a big factor."

Large Halloween decoration of a black tree which appears to have come to life. Its arms are held up beside its head and a face on the tree looks to be screaming. It is outside. It has orange, yellow and red leaves wrapped around its arms
Hundreds of families visit each year

But what do the neighbours have to say about all this?

"They frowned upon it at the start. I think they're used to it now," he said.

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